Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Fynhallow

Isle of Gunn, Orkney

January 1594

ALISON

I wake to the smell of fire.

I rise quickly, scanning the earthen floor of the cottage lest the carpet of ferns I have placed to hold the heat has set alight. Silver moonlight pours through the cottage window that overlooks the bay. Above my bed, the posy of herbs I fastened to the beam is silvered with frost. The air is filled with winter’s teeth.

I wrap my shawl across my shoulders against the chill and make for the stove, enjoying the warmth. It is not yet dawn, and no one else stirs, not even the chickens in the rafters nor the calf that Beatrice has taken as a pet. Outside, an owl calls, and I stiffen. An owl is an omen. It brings a message.

I hold my breath, listening for the owl’s tidings. These should unfurl inside my mind as a thought with edges, an instinct. But only the faces of my children come, and I realize with a start that I cannot hear either of them. Edward and Beatrice are restless sleepers, often calling out in slumber, even responding to each other, as though they inhabit the same dream. But tonight, there is only the call of the owl and the distant wash of the sea.

Edward’s bed is empty. I tear back the coverlet and search beneath the straw mattress lest he has fallen beneath the ground, dissolved into vapor. He is not there.

“Beatrice?”

She does not stir. I lunge toward the gaping square of the neuk bed, set into the stone wall of the cottage for warmth. The calfling is curled up on the coverlet, where it usually is, for Beatrice likes it to sleep with her. But my daughter is gone.

A cold terror sluices around my shoulders, enclosing my heart in ice. Have the children been taken? William is yet in Kirkwall, repairing the stonework in the cathedral. When last we spoke, he had redoubled his efforts with the cohorts there who seek to overthrow the earl. And although the plot has yet to take shape, their consultation has not been without danger—the calfling that sleeps now in my daughter’s bed was born of the milking cow we found put to death outside our front door five nights afore. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear.

I pull on my kirtle, cloak, then my cap and boots, before dashing into the night air, scanning the field and the byre for any sign of the children. No sign of them. William tore out the hedges that ran along the bank so we could keep watch for approaching visitors, but in the dark no such view is afforded. The black sky is clear, a full moon fixed above, creating pools of light and wells of deep shadow.

“Edward? Beatrice? You must call if you hear me!”

All is silent.

And still, the wind carries the musk of an open flame.

I hasten after it, heading first to the caves that run along the outcrop above the beach. Behind me, the owl lifts silently toward the moon, its white wings set aglow by moonlight. But then it curves around behind me, headed toward the brae behind our cottage.

That is where I am to go.

···

Voices swirl in the air as I near the top of the brae, though the clamor of my heart is enough to drown out almost all sound. The climb to the towering rocks is fearsomely steep, and for much of the year it is almost impossible to traverse on account of ice or flooding. The children often take their sledges out in the snows and hurl themselves down apace, and I watch, praying for their safety. It is sheer desperation now that helps me climb to the top, tearing my boots on the rocks as I do. Drenched with sweat, I grasp the base of the rock that stands at the top of the hill and pull myself to the summit.

I am careful to conceal myself as I peer down into the fairy glen below. The glen is named for the spiral of rocks found there, which legend says marks the spot where the fae meet. Tonight, it seems a different kind of gathering is occurring. Two score men and one woman congregate around a large fire in the center of the spiral, smoke pluming toward the sky. As my thoughts begin to untangle from the snare of blind fear, I remember—tonight is no ordinary moon. It is the Wolf Moon, the first of the year, marking a season of change, bravery, and loyalty.

I crouch behind the rock, aware that someone is drumming, and someone is speaking. It is difficult to hear their words, but then a figure amidst the crowd takes a familiar shape, and I realize that it is my mother. She is wearing a long cloak made of wolfskins and a helmet of deer horns. She approaches the fire, holding hands with two others. A girl, and a boy, both wearing cloaks of wolfskins.

Edward and Beatrice.

I open my mouth to call out, but then I recognize others in the group. The woman singing and drumming the bodhran is Jonet. She and I played together throughout many a summer on Fynhallow when we were children. The two men standing in front of the fire with crossed halberds are Solveig Anderson and David Moncrief, the blades of their weapons glinting in the flame.

The gathering is the Triskele, the oldest clan of magic-wielders in the world. And they are initiating my children.

I creep down the other side of the hill toward another rock, my mind wheeling for answers. I am outnumbered, and the Triskele will not halt an initiation ceremony at my bidding. They will not hesitate to cut me down if I attempt to stop it.

Even though I was once one of them.

So I watch, my heart in my mouth, as the children answer questions posed to them by the halberd bearers. They must answer the questions correctly, or face being impaled. I scramble to my feet, the impulse to protect them overcoming my fear of their weapons. But as I move from behind the rock, poised to hurl myself down amidst the crowd, I see David and Solveig stepping aside, and the children kneel by the fire, their hands in the air in supplication.

The drumming grows faster, and a wild cry rises up from the group.

I watch on as Duncan, one of the older members of the group, large as a bear, approaches Edward, carrying what looks like a black slab of stone. But I know it is not a stone—it is a book. A book with black pages, its binding made from a tree.

The group begins to sing along to the drumbeat, a long, sustained note held in unison. My son holds the book to his face.

Suddenly, he lets out a long scream, a cry of anguish. My instinct is to race to him to see if he is well, if he is injured. But then Beatrice also shrieks like a wounded creature, and some long-buried memory rises up of my mother telling me to do the same.

My children are not merely being initiated into the Triskele. They are being ordained as Carriers, by signing the book.

One’s purest signature is the sound of one’s fear.

And The Book of Witching holds them all forever.

···

I lie still in bed, nerves jangling, anxious for my children’s return. When dawn inches across the fields like a gold sheet drawn across a bed, I hear them tiptoeing into the cottage, trying not to rouse me. I force myself to lie still instead of jumping up to drill them with questions. Beatrice is merely six years of age and does not know my mind on the matter of the ritual. But Edward, at twelve, knows I will not stand for the Triskele.

I refuse to be wounded by his decision, however. He is yet young enough to be persuaded, and my mother is very persuasive. It is she who is responsible for this infraction, not my children. They are simply caught up in a family dispute.

It takes a great deal of patience to wait until I am free to head to my mother’s cottage. She is choleric in the mornings, and besides, I need time to soften my anger. And I ought not to abandon my chores. I go into the field and let the sheep and goats out of the byre, scattering oats for them across the frosted ground and breaking the ice in their water trough. The well is similarly frozen over, and I gather a bucket of stones to break the surface before drawing water and carrying it home in buckets.

Beatrice and Edward are usually up by dawn, the noise of the chickens a blare through which even the dead could not sleep. But today they do not stir, exhausted from last night’s initiation. I think of William, and how I dare not tell him. What if he had been here? Would my mother still have taken the children from their beds?

Unlike me, William would not have hesitated at the sight of the weapons wielded by the Triskele. He would have risked his life to stop the children being initiated.

I serve them oatcakes at the stove, picking motes of ash out of Beatrice’s hair—remnants from last night’s initiation.

“Are you well, Mother?” Edward asks. He can see I am ruminating.

I kneel between them. “I saw you last night. In the glen. You know my mind on the Triskele.”

“But you are Triskele, Mama,” Beatrice says, flicking a look at her brother. “Grandmother said you would be pleased.”

“No, she didn’t say that,” Edward scolds. He glances at me, guilt written large upon his countenance. “She gave us a choice. She said we ask your permission, that you would likely say no. Or we could go with her in secret.”

“And you chose to go in secret,” I repeat slowly. “Despite knowing I would be displeased.”

His cheeks burn, and he lowers his eyes.

“I want to be like you,” Beatrice says, reaching out to touch my hair. She hates that her own hair is blonde, like William’s, and not dark, like mine and Edward’s. “And it was fun, Mama.”

Edward scoffs. “You were scared.”

“I was not scared,” Beatrice flings back.

“You said the fire was scary.”

“I said it was hot ,” she snaps, eyes blazing.

I tell them to be quiet, for my head is throbbing after a night of little sleep. “You must not tell your father,” I say. “Agreed?”

“Why?” Beatrice asks, puzzled. “Will he be cross?”

“Yes, but not with you.”

“With who, then?”

“Grandmother,” Edward answers.

···

I head across ice-hardened fields under a glancing white sky, the mountain’s round head blanched by a scree of cloud. The weather is wild again this morning, hard rain driving sideways as I make for the brae where my mother’s cottage stands. Much of Orkney’s land is fen, swamp, mire, sinuous lines of sandstone and basalt rimming the coastlines. But Gunn is heavily forested, copses and boscages undulating through deep valleys to the cliffs. Storms have rendered this woodland treacherously muddy, tree roots roping across the path. The old wych elm that marks a hundred paces to the pool has shed its golden leaves, standing naked save its fresh coat of lichen and beard of rooty branches. I am mindful always when I take this path of the coal seam that runs alongside, the signature of a dead forest from long ago. I appreciate the black line of it, the afterlife of all the trees and leaves that once flourished like the wych elm providing warmth and light in our homes so many years on.

I have been wary and cautious since I was a bairn. The only one of my mother’s six weans to survive past adolescence, I sense I was her least favorite, or the one who inherited the fewest of her traits. I am more like my father was—quiet, preferring to wander the halls of my own mind than those of any dwelling wrought of stone or wood. My mother is bold as a wildcat, born for war—our family heralds both from the old clans of Orkney and the Vikings that usurped them, and surely my mother would feel at home on a longship, wielding an ax. Her nickname for me is peerie moose , which means “small mouse,” on account of how quiet I was as a child. Or at least, that was how she explained it. She said I had a penchant for both hiding away from her and keeping so still and so quiet that I could never be found. I would both infuriate and scare her half to death, slipping inside a bale of rushes or a coffer while she called my name, frantic. When she shares such tales—laughing at the memory of it while using it to illustrate what a torment I was as a child—I wonder why my younger self sought to worry her so. I must have heard the fear in her voice as I hid in the dark, quiet as a rock.

The Triskele is the oldest clan in all of Scotland and, I daresay, the whole wide earth. This is not the main characteristic of the Triskele, however—rather, it is the knowledge and practice of old magic that the Triskele is known for. And while magic is as pervasive as the grass in the fields and the leaves on the trees, the Triskele are the only clan to be entrusted with the most important of magical artifacts— The Book of Witching . And it is this I witnessed my children swearing to carry last night, by screaming their own fears and darkness into its pages. Many who are initiated to carry The Book of Witching are not called upon to do so, but my mother is the chosen Carrier for this generation, and she foresaw that I would be next, and then my children.

But I left. I told the Triskele that I was no longer a member, tearing the cloak they made for my initiation in two. And my mother has never forgotten it.

She is not alone when I arrive, judging from the donkey tied up in the byre. I consider turning around and heading home until I can speak to her without company, but she pulls back the wolfskin from her front door and waves to me.

“Good morrow, Alison.”

She is smiling, and I see her mood is fair. She is bright-eyed, despite the sleepless night, on account of the clay pipe in her mouth. A long black braid of hair sits over her shoulder like a pet snake—she refuses to wear a coif or forehead cloth, though she knows well it sets the gossips’ tongues ablaze—and she wears her woolen shawl the color of poppies, a forbidden color for peasants like us. The sumptuary laws state that only the rich may wear such colors, and by wearing her shawl my mother risks a fine of ten pounds a day and three months’ imprisonment. But, as ever, she does not give a damn.

“Come inside, Alison,” she calls, blowing a thick cloud of pungent tobacco smoke in my direction. “I have fresh oatcakes in the pot.”

I follow after, finding a young man sitting by the fire. A client, come to seek my mother’s assistance with an ailment or affliction. I wonder if he is local to Orkney, or if he has traveled from afar. Her clay pipe was payment from a Frenchman who sailed from Normandy to procure a spell for plentiful rain for his new vineyard.

“This is Gilbert,” she tells me, as though I should know who Gilbert is. She gives him a stern look. “That wax won’t stir itself.”

He reacts with a start, leaning forward to a pot on the stove that bubbles with liquid wax.

“This is my daughter, Alison,” she tells Gilbert. “She is also a witch.”

She winks at me, for she knows I do not like the term. These days there is a new meaning put upon it that chills my blood. It is a mere two years since the king put scores of people to death in North Berwick for apparently driving storms across the North Sea while he traversed upon his ship, declaring them witches, and invoking the Bible’s command to kill anyone who is one. Many of the witches were women, and the king has made it known that he believes women and girls to be more inclined to Satan’s wiles than men. Every week since, the Sunday sermons declare witches to be a scourge permitted by God to separate the wheat from the tares. And yet the parson himself visits my mother seeking magic for his humors, for charms to rid his well of rot, for his dreams.

I cannot remember a time when the divide between magic that is of God and that deemed of Satan was so entangled, so difficult to discern. It is said the king has his own magicians, and his own witches, and that he consults with them and seeks their counsel. And yet, he declares that witches must be put to death. It is maddening to think upon.

I sit upon the old oak coffer in the corner by the pig, who lies on a bed of rushes. He is too old for anything but slumber and prefers to be indoors with Mother. Worse is his name—he is called Magnus, which offends almost everyone who discovers it, aghast that Magnus the Viking earl, Magnus the patron Saint of Orkney, now shares his good name with a pig. But my mother is inclined to such things as offense for its own sake. And, she will tell anyone who listens, St. Magnus’s forefathers usurped the islands of Orkney from the Triskele, claiming power that was not his to wield. It is proper, she’ll say, that a pig adopts his name.

“Here,” Mother says, passing me a cup of malvoisie. “It’s sweetened with sugar. Just as you like it.”

She sits on a stool next to Gilbert and passes him a handful of herbs, pebbles, and berries. “Crush these up and drop them into the wax,” she tells him. I know what comes next. Gilbert is making a wax figurine of someone he wishes to love him, or perhaps someone to whom he wishes harm. I still know the words of the spell. He will need something that belongs to the person. A lock of hair, or a piece of clothing. Perhaps a tooth, or a small bone.

I watch as he removes a cotton sack from his pocket and takes out a small white button. He looks at it tenderly, then glances at me.

“My son’s,” he says. “He has chincough.”

I draw a sharp breath—my own son was poorly with chincough ten years ago this winter. I am not certain this spell will work against such sickness. It did not work for me.

None of the spells worked. He was named William, after his father. Just eleven months older than Edward. They were such great friends, and Edward looked up to him enormously. We buried William on a wild, wet day such as this, in the graveyard in Gunn. Edward was so young that I thought—or hoped—he would forget his older brother. But even now, he will murmur his name in his sleep.

Once Gilbert has fashioned the hot wax into a shape resembling his son and uttered the spell, he pays my mother with a bag of coins and departs. I wait until I hear the clop of the donkey’s hooves on the path before challenging my mother.

I waste no time on pleasantries. “I saw you,” I tell her. “Last night. In the glen.”

She bends to sweep remnants of wax from the floor. “I know you did.”

“You took the children without telling me. My children. You came into my home and took them in the middle of the night.”

She cranes her head up and stares at me. I swore to myself that I would not let ire overtake me. That I would speak with her in a calm manner and not debase myself with fury.

But I feel undone by it.

She shrugs. “Well, if you saw it, why didn’t you speak?”

I don’t offer an answer.

“I thought that if you’d wanted to join us, you would have said something.” She smiles, and I feel a heat rise up the back of my neck. She is using pleasantries to disarm me, to deflect from the wrong she did against me last night.

“Gilbert should have come to see you about the matter with his bairn,” she says, scraping the remnants of wax into a sack. “You always were the better witch.”

I tut. “I am no witch.”

“No?”

“I am a spaewife.”

“Same thing, no?”

“You know very well they are not the same.”

She throws me a knowing smile, and for a moment I see my daughter’s face staring back. “A spaewife, eh? When Dougal Netherlee wanted to spare his cattle from the pestilence, who did he ask for help?”

“It was many years ago,” I say quietly.

“He said, ‘I wish to find the greatest witch in Orkney,’ did he not? And that brought him to you.”

I look askance, my cheeks flushing. I do not wish to be reminded of this.

“And you put a cross upon each of the cow’s foreheads, all sixty-nine of them. And how many did die?”

I sigh. She has told this story a number of times. Interjection only makes her say it louder.

“None,” she says, wagging her finger. “Not a single one of Master Netherlee’s cows died of the pest. Because of you.”

“I also put a cross on my own cow,” I tell her bitterly. “And that did not stop her throat being slit a few nights before last. You understand, Mother?”

“Understand?”

“That magic does not and cannot meddle with the actions of men.”

“Oh yes it does,” she says. “And you know very well that a single hex can change everything. It can change history. It can undo what has been done.”

She speaks fiercely, and I lower my head. “Only if the person hexing is seemly.”

She falls silent, because I am right—a spell or a hex is much, much more than talent, or a sack of ingredients. It is more than wax or teeth or locks of hair. It is why my own spells to save my children did not work, despite my best intentions. Some magic requires circumstance; it works only if the sorcerer is in love, or with child. Some work only if the sorcerer is a murderer, or a priest. There is still much about magic that we do not know.

“You know the children will tell William,” I tell her. “And he will be furious.”

“Perhaps he should join the Triskele.”

I make a noise of shock. The very thought of it!

“You know William would never .”

“Never is a very long time, lass.”

“His concern is with the rebels,” I say, bristling. “As the Triskele’s should be.”

“The Triskele is concerned with the situation,” she says.

“Concerned? Will this concern take the form of action?”

“Timing is of the essence,” she says with a smile. “You will see.”

I shake my head. “You must not draw Edward in.” Then, in case she thought I was not serious: “As his mother, I will not allow it.”

“And why not?” she says. “Joining the Triskele is a great honor…”

“By teaching him this art, you are placing a weapon in his hands. And you are making him a target. You know what the king has done.”

She gives a scoff. “We are all targets. The king has decided that magic caused the storm that almost killed him. But this is folly, Alison. We all practice magic. Even the king practices magic! Perhaps he should put himself on trial.”

She says it with a sweep of her arm and a wild laugh, but I cannot join her. The image of my children screaming into the book sends chills up my spine. They have a solemn responsibility now. The book may choose them to carry it. There are stories yet of the book driving its Carriers mad, whispering dark impulses. There are tales of Carriers murdering their families. The book, they would say later, drove them to it. The evil emanating from it is hard to resist, even for a Carrier.

“It’s a heavy burden to carry, Mother. And Beatrice is only six.”

“All of our family have been initiated into the Triskele since…” She waves a hand, though does not finish her sentence.

I fold my arms. “You are forgetting that I left the Triskele.”

She breaks the pieces of wax into the pot, ready to be melted a second time. Then she holds me in a look of piety. “Oh, Alison. We both know nobody leaves the Triskele.” She leans closer, a twinkle in her eye. “The book knows, too. And it will come for you. When you’re ready.”